THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS - #952

Orson Welles is the true prototype of a Wes Anderson character. A child prodigy, precocious and intelligent, obsessed with magic, a born entertainer, emerging from a semi-privileged background with a blind self-determination that would hinder as much, if not more, than it helped, he could have been Max Fischer or Steve Zissou or, god help him, in terms of his relationship to Hollywood, Eli Cash.



And I think even Wes Anderson would tell you, he wouldn’t have created his real second feature (Bottle Rocket fans, come at me [review]) without Orson Welles’ 1942 second feature, no The Royal Tenenbaums [review] without The Magnificent Ambersons.



The comparisons are obvious from the jump: the intro for each is a family history played out in a montage using artificially antiquated imagery, explained by a narrator with a soothing voice, somewhat detached, somewhat reverent, but also sardonic and prone to ironic commentary. In the case of The Magnificent Ambersons, it’s Welles himself, his only mask the recording booth, grappling with the stars of his narrative like a proud parent resigned to letting his children make their own mistakes.



Like the Tenenbaums, but with a more pronounced urgency, the Ambersons are a family in decline, even if they can’t see it yet. A family soon to be out of step. As the 19th century nears its close, the Ambersons are top of the heap, but soon they will be as superfluous as the horse-drawn carriage. Indeed, their happiness and prosperity will become inextricably linked to the advancement of the automobile. A onetime suitor of Isabel Amberson (Dolores Costello, Little Lord Fauntleroy), Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotton, The Third Man [review]) returns to town after years in exile looking to establish his own auto factory, building a model he designed. A widower with a young daughter, Lucy (Anne Baxter, All About Eve), Eugene is everything the most recent two generations of Ambersons are not. Namely, he is self-made and self-sufficient. Essentially, he is the Danny Glover character in The Royal Tenenbaums, an example of frugalness and responsibility--and thus an interloper in a clan resigned to doing things their own way.



It only takes one brief encounter for it to become apparent that a torch still burns between Eugene and Isabel. And one also quickly ignites between Lucy and Isabel’s bratty son, George (Tim Holt, Stagecoach [review]). They all come together at a glorious party thrown by the Ambersons and beautifully choreographed by Welles. There is dancing at the soirée, but the affair itself is its own dance, a physical exchange set to social rhythms. Welles favors long, complicated shots with the partygoers circling each other, George trying to disengage from the flow and isolate Lucy, but the crowd consistently coming together, dialogue providing the occasional percussive flourish. It’s a smooth and elegant set piece, establishing the full dynamic of The Magnificent Ambersons, assigning each player their part in the ballet. It’s also effortless, the director’s technique becoming invisible since his first feature; where Citizen Kane dazzled with its constant invention, Ambersonssoothes with its easygoing, imperceptible style.



The Magnificent Ambersons is based on a sprawling book by Booth Tarkington (Alice Adams), a family melodrama informed by historical sea changes. Part of adapting the book to film is paring it down to a manageable narrative, with a focus on George as the central figure. There is an irony to George. As the youngest Amberson, he is the most resistant to change, probably because he is the one who has benefited most from his grandfather’s fortune while contributing absolutely nothing to it. George expects everything to be handed to him and expects nothing to disrupt that. So, why adopt a horseless carriage when he is getting on fine with the dependable horse-drawn version? And when his father passes, if he were to let his mother marry Eugene, who knows what that would mean for the family fortune.



While George succeeds at heading off the romance, the business of making cars is something the remaining Ambersons see as a good investment prospect. Thus George’s two biggest concerns become linked, and if one were to believe in karma, his selfish block against happiness results in professional failure for Eugene and the bankruptcy of the Ambersons. George is a tough part to play. If an actor is too petulant, as was Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the 2002 Alfonso Arau adaptation, the movie becomes unwatchable. No one ends up really liking George, not his family, not even his director, but Tim Holt manages to maintain some glimmer of humanity for the character. There is a sense that his shell could break with the right impact. He can cross over from the side of the family that never worked for anything to the side that pitches in where it counts, leaving his bitter, scornful Aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead, Magnificent Obsession [review]) to join the jovial Uncle Jack (Ray Collins, Touch of Evil [review]), as it were. If George has cursed the family, then it will require a sacrifice to undo it.

Sadly, even as Welles had pared down the Tarkington novel, the studio would pare down The Magnificent Ambersons in his absence, gutting the plot by nearly an hour to shorten the running time. The full Welles cut of the film is one of the great holy grails of cinema, though one likely to never come to fruition, as there has been no indication that the missing footage exists anywhere, and up until Criterion recently rescued the film, Warner Bros. had treated it like an unwanted stepchild, only ever releasing it on DVD coupled with its more accomplished sibling, Citizen Kane. It’s a testament to Welles’ skill that the movie is still so damn good, but if you are watching it and get a weird feeling that something is missing or has been glossed over, your instinct could very well be correct. The one spot where it’s most obvious is the hurried conclusion, which was shot without the great director. Georgie’s off-screen redemption and rescue feels rushed. You have to wonder what the true character arc here was, what great moments fell to the editor’s scissors, or how it would have left the audience without the tacked-on finish. The final fade out in The Magnificent Ambersons comes without much warning.

A couple of other quick notes I jotted down on this viewing of The Magnificent Ambersons:

* Joseph Cotton has always had a quiet presence, making him the perfect foil for a blustery actor like Orson Welles, but in movies like Citizen Kane or Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, he also has an angry edge. Not so here. Eugene Morgan is his most gentle performance, and with his kind eyes and somewhat growly voice, it suits him.

* The audio in The Magnificent Ambersons is particularly impressive. Welles mixes the sound to match the location, with voices echoing and fading out in relation to where the actor is to the central focal point within the cavernous halls of the Ambersons mansion. Likewise, the lighting is designed to be natural, befitting the time period, meaning lots of shadows are cast across the rooms, changing to fit the time of day. In some scenes, the aesthetic becomes almost gothic, befitting the stifled passions and secrets that lay behind each door in the Amberson household. (See also: Hitchcock’s Rebecca [review]; Lang’s The Secret Beyond the Door [review].)

* I watched The Magnificent Ambersons on Christmas Eve, and there is enough wintery melancholy here to qualify it as a Christmas movie, but I’m posting the write-up closer to New Year’s, a more fitting holiday for The Magnificent Ambersons, as it’s all about the passage of time, and the need for growth and change. Shall we start a new tradition? Maybe pair it with Visconti’s The Leopard?

CAT PEOPLE - #833

“Is simplicity best


Or simply the easiest?

The narrowest path

Is always the holiest

So walk on barefoot for me

Suffer some misery

If you want my love”
                 - Martin L. Gore, “Judas”

It’s kind of nuts how well that opening verse from Depeche Mode’s 1993 album track “Judas” so fits what is going on with director Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past) and producer Val Lewton’s 1942 black-and-white horror film Cat People. It’s not just thematically accurate, but it’s also descriptive of the aesthetic technique. Cat People is about as unfussy a film as there has ever been. It’s the perfect example of how a filmmaker can effectively stoke the audience imagination by showing less, rather than more.

But it all starts with a script, and DeWitt Bodeen’s screenplay is itself spare. There isn’t much plot here. A young man meets a young woman at the zoo, and a romance is ignited. Oliver (Kent Smith) is intrigued by the pretty lass who is sketching cats outside the panther cage. Played by French movie star Simone Simon (La bête humaine [review], La ronde [review]), Irena is a strange girl, a Serbian immigrant who clings to folklore from the old country. Specifically, that once upon a time her people were vanquished by a righteous King, and those who escaped his wrath scattered across the world, their wickedness taking feline form. Even after they are married, Irena keeps Oliver at arm’s length, believing should they so much as kiss, she will transform into a leopard and tear her husband apart.

At first Oliver indulges these fantasies, but once he starts to worry she is taking these fables too seriously, he connects Irena with Dr. Judd (Tom Conway), who doesn’t believe these supernatural tales, but may not be on the up-and-up, either. And adding to this love quadrangle is Oliver’s co-worker Alice (Jane Randolph), that annoying sort of do-gooder who tamps down her own desires to make sure that the man she wants does what is right. Too bad she didn’t figure for the complicated, sociopathic emotional range of a jealous kitten.

Much of Cat People smolders slowly. In the early stages of their union, Irena’s wild stories don’t carry much threat. That’s because Tourneur withholds anything that would concretely suggest her claims are more than delusion. He ties the revelations of Irena’s truth to her jealousy. The more heated she gets about Alice, the closer we get to seeing her claws come out. In many ways, this little monster movie is a modern stalker story, the good guy unable to shake the troubled woman, and she strikes out at the one who would replace her.

Yet, that in itself is maybe too simple a reading. For as little as goes on above the surface, plenty can be gleaned from what lies underneath. Bubbling through all of this is a commentary on puritanical values, and particularly how they affect young women. Irena’s fear of her own sexuality is only warranted if her beliefs turn out to be true, but she has good reason to be scared of the masculine sex, and her fighting back against Dr. Judd is inarguably a justified defense. Here is a man in a position of trust who betrays the social contract. In the #metoo era, many might also gravitate to the fact that Irena is not believed, and that prevents her from finding a less deadly solution or obtaining real help. Wrapped up in all this, we can see a certain xenophobia, as well: Irena is different, and perhaps if she had embraced a more modern American lifestyle and been more like Alice, she’d be more comfortable in her own skin. Which is somewhat contrary to the beliefs of the time, but Hollywood was always progressive in its morals.

Good horror should be malleable in this way and stay relevant to contemporary issues, but I suspect Tourneur and Lewton were less high-minded than all that. Their primary focus was more likely just to scare filmgoers, and they seized upon relatable primal urges to create a vehicle for that. Most of the frights here are more unnerving than terrifying--though there is one pretty good jump scare, where the orchestra provides a screechy sound effect when the bus pulls in to pick up a nervous Alice*--but that’s okay. Tourneur is experimenting with the horror of the things that exist just beyond the reach of our senses--the things we can’t see, but think we do; the things we aren’t sure we hear. One of the most effective scenes is when Judd gets his comeuppance. Irena’s transformation happens entirely off-screen, but the doctor’s reaction tells us all we need to know--even if once again we only think we know what he is seeing. The tussle itself appears merely as shadows cast on walls, including one with a mural of a menacing panther (lest we forget, Irena is a cat!). We hear more than we see. Same with the earlier scene when Alice is at the pool. The echoes of her screams are more chilling than anything that might jump into the water with her.

It’s underkill, not overkill. It’s simplicity. Compare how light on its feet this Cat People is to Paul Schrader’s overdone, moronic 1980s remake for a quick object lesson in why less is more.

Or skip Schrader altogether and go with something more akin to a middle ground: the 1944 “sequel” The Curse of the Cat People, recently re-released on Blu-ray by Kino. In terms of follow-ups, Curse is in the vein of The Bride of Frankenstein for how it expands on the original and becomes its own weird thing. We can chalk some of that up to the movie originally being intended as a stand-alone feature with no connection to Cat People at all. It only morphed into a second entry in a series when Cat People became so successful.

Pretty much everyone except Tourneur returns for The Curse of the Cat People. Gunther V. Fritsch originally took charge of the director’s chair but himself was replaced by Robert Wise (The Day the Earth Stood Still, West Side Story). The new story features Jane and Oliver as the concerned parents of a young daughter, Amy (Ann Carter), who lives more in her imagination than she does in the real world. There is further cause for worry when Amy befriends the disturbed neighborhood dowager (Julia Dean) and starts talking to an imaginary friend that just so happens to be Irena.

The “cat” aspect of Cat People is completely dropped for this realm of gothic childhood fantasy, but that doesn’t make The Curse of the Cat People any less compelling. The dilemma of a child who is at odds with the world around her being put into peril by both her fantastical indulgences and the adults who won’t believe her has an inherent tension that will keep you guessing what will happen, while also hoping it won’t all go wrong. Fritsch and Gunther have a more up-front style--does Elizabeth Russell chasing Amy up the staircase remind anyone else of Kathleen Byron coming unhinged in Black Narcissus [review]?--but that works here. This time, what is “unseen” is actually witnessed by the little girl, casting the doubters in a whole different light.

Criterion’s edition of Cat People features a great cover and interior poster by influential comics artist Bill Sienkiewicz. Fans of the TV show Legion tangentially know his work as he originally created the character with Chris Claremont. And their legendary run on the New Mutants comic series is an inspiration for the movie that should be out sometime in the next year or so. Sienkiewicz’s work changed how artists approached a comic book page, combining painting and digital in fascinating ways. Look for his Elektra: Assassin graphic novel with Frank Miller, his own Stay Toasters, or if you can find it, his Classics Illustrated version of Moby Dick.

* This effect of a scare coming from the arrival of an otherwise mundane object is known as a “Lewton bus,” and perhaps the most perfect use of it was in the episode of The Simpsons where the Psycho theme is being played by an orchestra riding public transport.

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 10/12

My reviews of non-Criterion movies through October.

IN THEATRES...

* Argo, Ben Affleck takes a true story about a fake movie and turns it into genuine cinema.

* Bill W., a documentary about the man behind Alcoholics Anonymous

* Chicken with Plums, Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi's disappointing follow-up to Persepolis. 

* Flight, starring Denzel Washington and directed by Robert Zemeckis. Apparently even turkeys can fly upside down.

* Seven Pyschopaths, the comedy is dark and funny, the action appropriately visceral, but the second film from the director of In Bruges isn't as smart as it thinks it is.

* Sinister, half a good horror movie, half a bad one, and the better half doesn't make it worth the time.

* If you live in Portland is to attend the Alfred Hitchcock festival at Cinema 21. Here is what I wrote up for the Mercury.

ON BD/DVD...

* Bird of Paradise, a pre-Code picture from King Vidor, indulging in island fantasy cliches.

* Black Sunday, Mario Bava's 1960 horror debut is spooky and sexy.

* Chained, Jennifer Lynch's psychological horror movie doesn't quite link up.

* Cinderella, Disney's animated fairy tale comes to Blu-Ray. It looks marvelous, even if it is one of the studio's more middling efforts.

* Confessions of an Opium Eater, in which Vincent Price goes on a trip through Chinatown.

* Detachment, an arty drama about teachers overstuffs the lesson plan, but Adrien Brody and thre rest of the cast are great.

* Fear and Desire, the "lost" first film of Stanley Kubrick.

* Mad Men: Season Five, the best show on television keeps getting better.

* The Penalty, a potent silent film starring Lon Chaney as a double-amputee bent on revenge.

* Shut Up and Play the Hits, the documentary about LCD Soundsystem's last gig; features the full three-hour concert.

* Three Secrets, Robert Wise's 1950 melodrama about a trio of women who may or may not be the mother of a young boy stranded on a mountain.

* The Woodmans, a moving documentary about late photographer Francesca Woodman and the effect her suicide has had on her family.

SIDELINE: MORE REVIEWS FOR 5/11

A round-up of my reviews for non-Criterion movies in the past month.

IN THEATRES...

* The Beaver, Jodie Foster directs Mel Gibson, who talks through a beaver puppet. Yes, it's pretty crazy.

* Bridesmaids, this Kristen Wiig-led comedy is a real winner. Funny and heartfelt. And next time someone asks if Bridesmaids is a chick version of The Hangover, ask them if that's a stupid person's version of a smart question.

* Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog's 3D documentary about the Chauvet Caves. My favorite movie of the year so far.

* Everything Must Go, in which Will Ferrell drinks some sad beer, channels Raymond Carver, and is pretty good at doing it.

* Hesher, Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as the title character. Hit an open chord, take off your shirt, and be a teenage dirtbag, baby.

* Thor, another winner from Marvel. Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of the comic is mighty fun.

* True Legend, a disappointing new action flick from the awesome martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping. Lame story, too much CGI.

The NW Film Center in Portland also had a festival of twelve films starring Catherine Deneuve. I picked some of my favorites for the Portland Mercury. Read "The Two Faces of Deneuve."

I also wrote blurbs for older movies doing the revival rounds:

* Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin
* Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah

ON DVD/BD...

* Araya, Margot Benacerraf's 1959 blending of fact and fiction on the salt marshes of Venezuela.

* Bananas!*, a documentary about the fight against Dole Fruit, accused of poisoning Nicaraguan workers in the 1970s.

* The Captive City, Robert Wise's by-numbers anti-crime PSA from the 1950s.

* Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, an intriguing mash-up of classic indie cinema and classic movie musicals.

* Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno, a stupendous documentary sifting through the remains of the Diabolique-director's unfinished would-be masterpiece.

* Hold On!, Herman's Hermits come to America, join the space race, play some music, pitch some woo.

* The Misfits, John Huston directs Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe in their final screen roles. Also stars Eli Wallach and Montgomery Clift, in a script by Arthur Miller.

* Not as a Stranger, starring Robert Mitchum as a doctor who can heal anything but his own bad impulses. Directed by Stanley Kramer.

* Shoeshine, a Neorealist classic from Vittorio De Sica, released 1946.

* The Unloved, Samantha Morton's softly rendered, heartfelt directorial debut.

CHE - #496

"We now are in a time period where if a film doesn't receive unified acclaim, then it's viewed as damaged or a failure or something worse, and that's unfortunate. I don't feel there's a sense anymore that a movie can be polarizing and that can be a good thing. It's literally what is the number that you got on Rotten Tomatoes and if it's below a certain number, then your movie's not any good. You can imagine the number 2001 would have gotten on Rotten Tomatoes...."

- Steven Soderbergh, from the Making "Che" documentary, DVD 3

Few people have earned the level of respect I hold for Steven Soderbergh. When I first saw Che, the director had brought the roadshow version to Portland's Cinema 21, answering audience questions after a marvelous marathon showing of the movie in full. I've met plenty of people whose art inspired me over the years, and I usually have no problem keeping my cool. When I met Soderbergh, I got nervous and twitchy. My voice shook as I handed him a copy of one of my books, a small fantasy playing out in the back of my head that I would eventually get a call that he wanted to option it. One hopes that no matter how successful a person gets that they could continue to have such fantasies. Why do you think Barack Obama invites musicians he likes to the White House?

I have a feeling that Steven Soderbergh is also someone who still hangs on to his fantasies. The audacious creativity he shows from film to film leaves little doubt he dares to dream. In a way, he's a throwback to the directors who came up through the studio system in Hollywood's Golden Age, guys who never knew what their next assignment would be. Like how Robert Wise's first two movies were a historical drama and a horror movie, followed eventually by film noir, a boxing movie, comedies about oil lobbyists, war stories, corporate intrigue, and eventually some of the most popular musicals of all time. The difference is that Soderbergh has cinematic history to back him up, and he not only jumps around from subject to subject, genre to genre, but he picks and chooses what time frame he wants to emulate. Out of Sight was a 1970s crime picture, as much a character study as it was a plot-driven heist movie; The Good German emulated the 1940s in a bold and blatant manner; The Informant! laced in elements of 1960s screwball to underscore its story, especially with its Marvin Hamlisch soundtrack. Soderbergh also regularly returns to the cheap, arty indie fare he helped set the standard for with sex, lies, and videotape.

There are few filmmakers who would undertake a four-and-a-half hour, two-part biography of Che Guevara, insisting that it be filmed in Spanish to make it more authentic. Which came first? Soderbergh's mad plan or the jokes about Vincent Chase wanting to do the same thing to make Medellín on Entourage? At one point, Vinnie was even going to be replaced in the role of Pablo Escobar by Benicio Del Toro.

Che turned out better for Soderbergh than Vincent Chase's film did for him, even if it wasn't a huge box office hit. (Though, given Soderbergh's cross-platform release, making the movie available through cable on-demand services at the same time it toured theatres, it probably did better than most folks think.) It's doubtful anyone involved with Che set out to make it thinking it was going to make massive money. This is a movie like Warren Beatty's Reds, one that was made precisely because it was such an artistic gamble. It's something that both filmmakers needed to do, consequences be damned.

Beatty and Soderbergh likely looked back at the same influences when they made their films (and who knows, Soderbergh might have actually looked to Reds). Namely, I see Che as a modern political epic on par with the big movies of David Lean. In particular, Lawrence of Arabia, the story of one man, a controversial figure, who travels great lengths across harsh environments to get to his goal. Both Che and Lawrence of Arabia have two-act structures, with the break between Part I and Part II signalling significant change for the man. The difference with Soderbergh's picture is there is almost an air of "just the facts" to how Soderbergh and writers Peter Buchman and Benjamin A. van der Veen put the narrative together; there isn't the same sweep of drama that marks the Beatty and Lean.

Part I of Soderbergh's film is the story of Ernesto Che Guevara's part in Fidel Castro's overthrowing of General Batista and claiming revolution in the name of the Cuban people. Benicio Del Toro starts the movie as the clean-shaven doctor joining the political cause, and he ends it as the hairy guerilla fighter immortalized on a million T-shirts and posters on college dorm walls. This portion of the movie covers three years, 1956 to the start of 1959, tracking the drive of Castro's forces from the coast of Cuba inland toward Havana. Intercut with this is black-and-white footage of Che visiting the United Nations in 1964, talking to the press, rich American intellectuals, and the whole of the UN, making a case for Cuba's independence. This is the first visual distinction Soderbergh makes in Che, contrasting the colorful and rich greens of the Cuban jungle with the newsreel-style footage in New York, which is meant to reflect how the world actually would have seen Che Guevara on his visit to the States, beamed out to them on their television screens.

There is another major difference, though this one perhaps unintentional. The New York scenes are shot in an almost cinema-verite style, more loose and off the cuff. It's possible that Soderbergh is making a kind of cinematic pun, using the free-floating shooting techniques of the French New Wave, matching their filmic revolution to Che's political revolution. By contrast, the colorful Cuban scenes are more traditionally choreographed, with the camera often rooted in one spot. The Santa Clara sequence in particular looks and moves like an old-school battle scene, like something out of a John Sturges movie. Efficient, business-like, but still full of tension.

Che was the first movie to be shot entirely with the RED One Digital Cinema camera, and the device freed Soderbergh--who shoots his own films under the name Peter Andrews; also, look for him briefly as the television director when Che is getting interviewed for "Face the Nation"--to experiment and change his style and have it flow seamlessly from one look to the next. Part I of Che is shot in the very wide aspect ratio of 2.35:1, just like a big budget color movie from the 1950s or '60s, whereas Part II is a more restrained 1.78:1. This is meant to illustrate the nature of the two sides of the story. The Cuban campaign is large, full of promise, and triumphant; the Bolivian offensive is cramped, dirty, and ultimately a failure. Che spends most of the time trapped in a forest, unsure of how to get out, and so the screen boxes him in, as well. The color palette even changes. Part II is dirty, brown, and gray; it's sickly and sun-bleached.

Benicio Del Toro plays Guevara as an enigmatic, distant creature. He is kind of the quintessential Del Toro character, actually, as Del Toro's natural presence tends to put him a step or two removed from the audience. Many remember him first seeing the actor as the indecipherable Fenster in The Usual Suspects. In that role, language made him unknowable, which was also a component of how we perceived his character in his other collaboration with Soderbergh, Traffic. In that movie, he played a Mexican cop who eventually became entangled in a U.S.-based drug sting, and though his was an essential component of the movie, he was also separate. Foreign. Likewise, as Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he was practically a hallucination, a sidekick who didn't exist outside of Hunter Thompson's field of vision. It will be interesting to see how this quality comes into play in his performance as Lawrence Talbot in the upcoming The Wolfman remake.

Throughout the first half, Del Toro's Che is a purposeful speaker. He is nearly humorless, completely dedicated to his mission, dogmatically so. He doesn't travel across the Cuban countryside as a warrior so much as he comes across as a missionary, a holy man ready to spread the gospel. As Soderbergh shows him, he talks his way toward Havana, be it convincing the peasants that he has come to help, motivating his troops, or negotiating with enemy officers. Some have complained about this saintly portrayal of the man, believing any film that doesn't get into the atrocities he committed toward his political enemies could never be an accurate depiction. To get into that period of Guevara's career, however, would probably require a third part to the movie, one that would sit uneasily with these two.

The way I see it, Soderbergh, Buchman, and van der Veen weren't concerned with the right or wrong of Guevara's mission. They aren't taking any sides. In fact, you could say they abstract the character to make him the mission and nothing more. Che in this movie comes to embody the revolutionary impulse, the living icon, more than just a face on a shirt. His entire life becomes about the next liberation. Part I of Che ends by flashing back to the portentous first conversation with Castro, where he agrees to join the cause if Fidel (played here by Demian Bichir) promises he can take the fight to all of Latin America once they have freed Cuba. Part II is then the portrait of a man whose single-mindedness takes him too far off the rails. He subsumes his own identity to the socialist ideal. In the opening scenes of Part II, we see Che in disguise, renouncing his Cuban citizenship (if in gesture only) and heading to Bolivia, not just unrecognizable to us, but also to himself. He is a personality in crisis.

Che spends almost a year, 1966 through 1967, wandering around in the Bolivian jungle, sinking further into the morass of his own idealism. The hubris of righteous belief is taking for granted that everyone else will get on board; the Bolivians do not. The man seems to retreat into himself. He goes by a different name, never allowed to be who he really is, and his asthma all but knocks him down. The motivational speeches are almost entirely gone, there is no more of the smooth-talking rebel. Del Toro physically transforms himself, letting his hair and beard grow long, changing his posture to be more hulking. Che has been turned into a freakish outcast. By the end of the movie, his myopia has so overtaken him, we are literally looking through his eyes.

Part II is so mired in disappointment and failure, I am not sure there is any way for Soderbergh to keep it from dragging. The endless trek through the jungle starts to look the same after a while, which puts us in the shoes of the soldiers, but it may also put some people off. The Bolivian troops are a lot more anonymous than the Cuban rebels Che commanded. We don't get to know them, there aren't the distinct personality types. In Cuba, we had the teenagers who grew up in the rebel army, we had Little Cowboy and his cowboy boots, we had Che's fellow officers, who teased and joked with him, and we also had Aleida (Catalina Sandino Moreno from Maria Full of Grace), the love interest that lurked around the edges. Here, Che takes little interest in his soldiers. He's not educating them, his attitude has changed. While in Cuba he rejected a sixteen-year-old as being too young, in Bolivia he says that's an age where a man is old enough to know what he wants. This keeps the guerillas detached from the audience. Which, again, is accurate, but not as involving. Can we fault a filmmaker, though, for making us feel in a way that is appropriate to the subject?

Che ends with a brief shot of Guevara back on the boat that first carried him into Cuba, reminding us of the youthful promise he once represented, but now colored by all that has followed it. In this last shot, Del Toro somehow looks older, and he now appears pensive. It's a reminder of how far we've come, from that point until now, and the way we see Che is with a new perspective. He has become a man on a collision course with destiny, and we are left to wonder if it was all worth it. The hope of yesterday dies amidst the deluge of too many tomorrows.

Criterion's release of Che is a three-disc set, packaged in one of their beautiful booklet-style boxes, featuring Eric Skillman's trademark photo illustrations. Each part of the movie is given its own disc, and the third disc is all supplements. The thrust of the extras is history--the history of the production and the history behind it. The film and its winding path from conception to completion is covered at length in a 50-minute making-of documentary. Those curious about how Che came about and why the production team made the choices they did will be more than satisfied by this lean, forthright peek behind the curtain. Even the criticisms the film's detractors leveled at Che are addressed. There is also a separate documentary about the use of the RED One camera that should please tech heads. Soderbergh even touches on the fact that Che the man was considered a cold personality, and addresses my query regarding the tone of the movie: he wanted Che the film to be chilly like Che the man.*

The commentary for both movies is by Jon Lee Anderson, the author whose biography Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life was the major source material, alongside Che's diaries, for the movie. Anderson describes the intersection of fact and cinema. Soderbergh was intent on showing only events that could be backed up with historical documentation, and Anderson in turn backs the director up in his goal. There are also new interviews with other historians and people involved in the real events on DVD 3, alongside a 1967 British documentary about Bolivia's situation at the time Che's mission failed called End of a Revolution. This 26-minute program was aired on Granada's "World in Action" in England, and begins with images of Guevara's corpse. Talk about a cold opener!

There is a deleted scene from Part I where Che tells one of his men that he needs to build a hospital in a remote area. The man asks how, he doesn't have the supplies. Che, unbending tells him to figure out a way. This small scene encapsulates the figure: he saw what needed to be done and never wavered from the conviction that it could and would be done. Whatever it took, he'd figure it out. That was how he lived, and that also embodies this production. Against all odds, the people behind Che figured it out. They saw a movie to be made, and they got it done.

And for the record, Che's score on Rotten Tomatoes is currently at 62%.

* As a glimpse inside my process, I always nail down the body of my review before I watch the extras so as to formulate my own opinions free of the influence of others. So, in a case like this, if I have a question that is answered in a bonus feature, I really did ask it and try to wrestle with it myself before stumbling on the revelation. That said, Soderbergh also mentions John Sturges, and so it makes me think that Sturges came to mind for me because the director must have also mentioned that influence when I saw him speak last March.


This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.